Faith Seeking Understanding

A Fragment on Chesterton and Synergism

Oscar Wilde [1854-1900] said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde. G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (reprint, 2004; New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1908), 50.

Above we have a clever quote; it sparkles with Chesterton’s wit and smashes with his blunt force; the statement is pregnant with great truth and some terrible lies.

Oscar Wilde was an early public homosexual and defender of pedophilia on the Greek model (post-pubescent boys). He died young in part because of the punishment for his use of rent-boys, the notoriety of his crime, and in part through an artistic listlessness. He was also a brilliant writer and wit, but neither as clever nor wholesome as Chesterton.

Rather than exposing the repugnant nature of Chesterton’s rhetoric and theology, I’d like to make the statement exhaustively true with some additions and changes:

A Fragment on Scholasticism or a Plea of a Scholastic Believer

The active immutability of God, the ever-living and eternally unchanging interpenetration of the divine persons, translates into the divine willingness, without a shadow of turning, to make us partakers of that gloriously inalterable and living incorruptibility. We are most fortunate that in the incarnation God is not engaged in a work of self-realization but in the redemptive working-out of his eternal glory: incarnation is, in its immutable purpose, God with us and for us. Such doctrine, I would hope, will never be viewed as “subevangelical.” Our piety must not falter before the first paradox, the involvement of immutable God, because on the first rest the second, the transformation of death into life, of corruptibility into incorruptibility.

Richard A. Muller, “Incarnation, Immutability, and the Case for Classical Theism, Westminster Theological Journal, 45 (1983), 40.

Richard Muller is here responding to an essay by Clark Pinnock, “The Need for a Scriptural, and therefore Neo-Classical Theism.” Pinnock’s argument is that the traditional conception of God as immutability, atemporal, and so forth are pagan philosophical imports.

For many Bible-believing Christians there is a ring of truth to Pinnock’s statements. The God of systematic theology can appear a cold and distance deity. He may, especially when the vocabulary is unfamiliar, poorly defined, and not applied to worship seem dead.

A Fragment on Two Types

Allegory, largely typological, pervades both the Old and the New Testaments. The events in the Old Testament are ‘types’ or ‘figures’ of events in the New Testament. In The Song of Solomon, for instance, Solomon is a ‘type’ of Christ and the Queen of Sheba represents the Church: later explained by Matthew (12:42). The Paschal Lamb was a ‘type’ of Christ.

Scriptural allegory was mostly based on a vision of the universe. There were two worlds: the spiritual and the physical. These corresponded because they had been made by God. The visible world was a revelation of the invisible, but the revelation could only be brought about by divine action. Thus, interpretation of this kind of allegory was theological.

J. A. Cuddon, s.v. allegory, in Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (London: Penguin Group, 1998), 22.

The above quote has some flaws, but the source is not a biased ‘Christian’ but a rather an important writer and scholar. Considering the worldview of the writers of both the Old and New Testament, he concludes that typology is a necessary hermeneutical device for understanding the authors.

Let’s see if we can prove portions of his definition from Scripture.

A Fragment on Lust

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

CXXXIX

The expense of the spirit in a waste of shame

   Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

   Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight;

   Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the maker mad;

   Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof,--and proved, a very woe;

   Before, a joy proposed; behind a dream:

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

   To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Comment:

I doubt that Shakespeare was born again, though I would be delighted if he knew and walked with Christ. Even so, there are two great benefits to this poem:

The first is a biblically informed, beautiful, and accurate meditation on the destructive nature of the passions and the conscience’s knowledge of lust. Each of us is aware that we want things that we ought not to want.

These desires are liars from the moment we contemplate them; they are the foundation of all lies, murder, and cause wholesome shame. Civilization and all of its benefits are undermined by the pursuit of them, and they endanger all human relationships.

A Fragment by Thomas of Aquinas (c. 1224-1274) - Four Kinds of Fear

Definition of Fear: “fear bears on two things, namely, the evil from which someone flees through fear, and whatever seems to be the source of that evil” (215).

Worldly fear: “sometimes it happens that the evil from which someone recoils is contrary to a bodily or temporal good which a person sometimes loves inordinately and recoils from having it injured or destroyed by a mere man. This is human or worldly fear and is not from the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Lord forbids such fear: do not fear those who kill the body (Matt 10:28).”

Fear of punishment: “There is a second type of fear which recoils from an evil contrary to created nature, namely, the evil of being punished, and shrinks from having this evil inflicted by a spiritual cause, namely, by God. Such fear is praiseworthy in at least one respect, namely, that it fears God. . . But insofar as such fear does not recoil from an evil opposed to one’s spiritual good, namely, sin, but only punishment, it is not praiseworthy. It has this short coming not from the Holy Spirit, but from man’s guilt.” (215-17).

Aphorisms for Thinking about Separation: Jesus Separated Better than We Can

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 8: All applications must include the sure knowledge that we can’t separate perfectly because we are still sinners living in the regime of sin and death. Thus part of the grace we extend to others must include the possibility that we ourselves are too narrow or too loose.

In seminary, a friend of mine from the Midwest told me that his father, who was a fundamentalist pastor, received a letter from a brother in Christ practicing strict separation. The letter informed him that he was being separated from. It was polite and earnest, established the chain of separation between the author and the recipient, and closed pleading that he separate from the closest of the offending parties. The only odd thing about the letter was that my friend’s father had no idea who the author was. They had never met.

My memory of the conversation is that the fellow writing the letter was practicing 5th degree separation, but the memory is hazy, so perhaps it was only 3rd or 4th. But if we were to imagine a chain of 5th degree separation, it would look something like this: the Roman Catholic Church (1st), J. I. Packer who signed Evangelicals and Catholics Together (2nd), prominent evangelical pastor who disagrees with Packer but does not separate from him (3rd), me who also disagrees with Packer, but who will not separate from him or my former pastor who is a friend of Packer’s (4th), anyone who remains in fellowship with me (5th).

Aphorisms for Thinking about Separation: Grace Toward the Godly of the Past

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 7: Our patterns of application of separation today must include the grace we allow the godly of the past.

Gurnall’s work is peerless and priceless; every line is full of wisdom; every sentence suggestive. This “Complete Armour” is beyond all others a preacher’s book: I should think that more discourses have been suggested by it than by any other uninspired volume. I have often resorted to it when my own fire has been burning low, and I have seldom failed to find a glowing coal upon Gurnall’s hearth. (Charles Haddon Spurgeon, 1834-1892, quoted in The Christian in Complete Armour abridgment and modernization printed by The Banner of Truth Trust)

I am in full agreement with Spurgeon. The Christian in Complete Armour is a spiritual delight and treasure trove. Much of my preaching and illustrating from Scripture relies heavily on Gurnall’s example and even remembering his sermons warms my heart to Christ.

Let’s consider a little background on William Gurnall (1616-1679). He signed the Act of Uniformity in 1662, which imposed The Book of Common Prayer, required episcopal ordination, and made the crypto-Catholic Charles II the “only supreme governor” of the Anglican Church. At least 2,000 ministers refused to sign the act and lost their churches. Men like Bunyan, Owen, Howe, and Baxter were persecuted because of the act.

Aphorisms for Thinking about Separation: Separating from Our Enemies and Friends

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 6: Our patterns of application of separation need to include people to the left and the right on the group boundary markers—our “friends” and those who make us uncomfortable. Grace on believers who are like us or provide advantages to us but no or little grace on believers who are different is a sin (James 2:1; Luke 6:32-33).

Seven years ago, I became the pastor of a church that had a history of practicing second-degree separation. My exposure to the defense of such doctrine and the organizations enforcing it had been rather limited. And so I began reading, watching, and asking questions. Many of the conversations that I’ve had were decidedly cordial—some less so.

Allow me to share how one conversation about separatism with a representatives of a mission board went:

Aphorisms for Thinking about Separation: 'Imminent' May Not Mean 'Soon'

(This article was originally published on SharperIron.org)

Aphorism 5: No one knows when Jesus is coming back or how long it will be before Jesus comes back, and so application of separation passages cannot be dependent on how close or far the return of Christ is.

The words are startlingly clear—“the Pope of Rome … is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God; whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” This statement is found in The London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 (26.4) as well as in unmodified versions of the Westminster Confession of Faith (25.6). Currently most modern Presbyterians and Baptists using these confessions have changed the wording or do not enforce this section. However, some stalwarts still remain.

Let’s unfold the exegesis a bit. There are about a dozen passages of Scripture in play, and application has been made. The “man of sin [has been] revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thess. 2:3, KJV). The “falling away” has occurred and the person bearing the title “the Pope of Rome” is the end time’s figure of the final antichrist (cf. 1 John 2:18). Of the 7 billion people on the planet currently, only one man or his successor can be the antichrist. There is now no possibility of salvation for some future pope, because he is the antichrist. And there is no point in continued exploration of the meaning of Daniel, Matthew 24, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Revelation on this issue.

Faith Seeking Understanding

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